San Miguel New Year's

Cobblestone streets still in use (for some reason).

Gosh, we're still struggling to catch up on our posts! Our tardiness can be partly blamed on the excitement of adjusting to our new computer. And just the general post-holiday slowdown I suppose. So, a little overdue, but here's the scoop on our New Year's trip to San Miguel.

First, we have to say "muchas gracias" to The Primroses who generously offered us their pad for a couple of nights while they were out of town. And of course we never would have gotten to meet The Primroses had we not been at the Moore-Ader wedding last Fall. Jennifer is Jessica's sister. So a big shout out to Jennifer, Clay, Jessica and Tristan. We sure hope we get a chance to show all of y'all around Mexico City soon!

The Primrose Palace

So San Miguel is about a three hours drive northwest of here, in Guanajuato. It is famously pretty and has a long bohemian (and gringo) history---it seems that its popularity with Americans began when the language and arts school in town accepted G.I. Bill students after the War. Nowadays, it is a favorite vacation and second-home spot (and increasingly a retiree haven). We stopped counting the Texas license plates after our first night. Of course it isn't all Texans in San Miguel. We also saw some folks from California and New Jersey.

No shortage of wide-brimmed hats...

...or vaguely-ethnic dresses...

...or linen. So much linen.

Our first night, by the way, was New Year's Eve. We rolled into town in the late afternoon and we were flabbergasted by how central Casa Primrose was---just a hop away from the main plaza!

On the Primrose terrace. We can see the Plaza!

After gaping a bit at the fantastic greenthumbs in evidence on the apartment's rooftop courtyard, we headed out into the town to grab some lunch and start sightseeing.

The inner courtyard

We can't stress this enough: dude is crazy for the flora.

The town is surrounded by mountains with church steeples on every horizon and the weather is fantastic with strong sun and cool breezes. The vibe in San Miguel is super relaxed and vacation-y; it is a small impeccably well-kept colonial town crawling with visitors and the friendly folks who cater to them which makes for a lot of English-language menus in the restaurants and to our great delight, a lot of places open on the holidays. We were still smarting from the desolate scene in Polanco last New Year's so we were overjoyed to learn that we had our pick of several decent-looking restaurants for the evening, a big fireworks celebration in the zocalo and New Year's Day shopping. Hooray for tourist economies!

A view from where we had lunch.

Waitress appears to not be having it.

Fun with mirrors!

Starting to lose it...

Dude is done.

So after visiting some cathedrals, we decided to take advantage of the cross-cultural scene and chose a Creole-Cajun place for dinner that night. The place was buzzing with tons of folks celebrating and in high spirits; Ivan, however, wasn't having it. He was seriously disappointed with the place, and also seriously teething and generally miserable. So Sasha and a screaming Ivan walked up and down the street, stopping for chats with the 15 year old car valet, who spoke pretty decent English and even better tourist Spanish and proved to be an old hand at entertaining despondent babies. Meanwhile, Sergio explained to our perplexed waiter back at the restaurant that we had a change of plans and wanted to take everything we had ordered home with us.

This happy kid at the same time on New Year's Day. Go fig.

Ivan eventually caved in to sleep and we were able to sit down to a nice adult dinner. We raised our glasses and toasted parenthood and the crazy way a quiet sleeping baby can make even the coldest dinner taste delicious! It was still hours away to midnight and we were in danger of falling asleep ourselves, but we stubbornly stayed up to open our bottle of moderately-priced/terrible champagne and catch the fireworks show from the rooftop. It was a glorious view. Here's to 2009!

And the rockets' red glare...

We started the new year the following morning back on the roof eating breakfast in the garden and admiring the views. Then we headed out to walk around the city and check out whatever arts and crafts we might be able to find. We visited the market, several churches and lots of lovely sidestreets. There was a bit of artesania on offer though we manged to keep our wallets closed for everyone but the sidewalk vendor selling one of those under the door, draft-busting beanbag snake things.

Obligatory dog-on-roof shot.

We ended the day with a trip to a very popular hot chocolate joint across from the lovely San Agustin. The cafe is apparently owned by a famous Argentine actress, Playboy centerfold and Mexican soap opera star named Margarita Gralia. The long wait was worth it because Sasha was eager to get her first-ever order of churros. It was pretty nippy at night in San Miguel and the hot chocolate really hit the spot--and the churros? Well, when properly dunked in the hot chocolate they were even better than funnel cake!

The boys watching the hot-chocolatiers.

Ay, que churro!

Spooky monster church

The next morning we planned to get an early start, heading home with a stop in Queretaro for lunch. Unfortunately, our early start was more of an early stop when Sergio went to pack up the car and was surprised with the sight of a dead-flat tire. Luckily, Sergio is pretty handy with a tire jack and we rode on our spare to the vulcanizadora (these guys are never far away in potholed Mexico). To our pleasant surprise, the price of patching and replacing the tire (which had been punctured by a screw): about three US dollars.

No door = low overhead. He passes the savings on to you!

And we were off!

We had heard really nice things about Queretaro and it certainly was a beautiful tidy little city though we only had about an hour and a half there to visit. We did manage to eat at the place that supposedly invented the gordita (enh, not that great actually), find an ice cream parlor, get a little lost in the centro and puzzle over a ca-razy over-the-top nativity scene in one of the plazas.

Lovely sunlit plaza (Ivan's asleep).

A little weird...

...a lotta weird.

Ivan had a couple of minor meltdowns along the way --- we've learned that a 6 month old Ivan doesn't go with the flow quite as easily as his younger self did. He seems to have a lot more trouble sleeping through distractions nowadays and gets impossibly frustrated when he is bothe tired AND interested in what's going on around him. Of course we also noticed this week that the kid has three stumpy white teeth working their way through his upper gum so boring old teething probably had a lot to do with his fussy primadonna tourist routine.

It turns out we were back in DF on that first Friday afternoon which meant Sergio still had two more days off before returning to work. We looked forward to a relaxing weekend , and Sasha was especially thrilled imagining Sergio's extra help around the house.

Right-o.

I got him, babe, don't worry.